Tech

This radio is a time machine with a Raspberry heart

The ingenuity of some to create gadgets mind-blowing with a Raspberry Pi seems to have no limits. We have seen smart mirrors Pip-boys, arcade games, and now a user has built a radio with a design vintage which is much more than just any radio. Is about a real musical time machine and, if you want (and you are a handyman), you can also build it yourself. We tell you all the details.

There seems to be nothing that a clever enough mind cannot build with a Raspberry Pi.

The little device is the heart and brain of many awesome creations from the community maker. And now, the user Byte-Ryder joins, a radio that is not like the others.

How to build a retro radio with a Raspberry Pi

It all started when Byte-Rider wanted to build for his father a radio with a beautiful retro aesthetic, which would bring back the best memories of a simpler childhood, without so much screen, not so much screaming on social networks.

However, Byte-Rider wanted to go further and build a musical time machine with which his father could move backwards or forwards in the music story depending on what you want to hear.

Thus, the tuning wheel becomes a dial in which you can choose the decade you prefer And, depending on the one you choose, the radio will broadcast music from those years, as you can see in the video.

If you want to go back to the psychedelia of the 60s, you can put the wheel in that time and, if you prefer the chords of Lili marlene And all that wartime music so typical, you can go back to 40.

To do this, the station works with a small Raspberry Pi Zero 2W and a program that allows you to identify in which position you have put the wheel, to play the music of the time. This is taken from the National Sound and Film Archive of Australia.

Besides all that you will need:

  • A Pimoroni Audio Amp SHIMN, to put the 3W speaker and that sounds pretty good.
  • A 1000C Adafruit PowerBoost module to give you power.
  • A PTV09A-4025F-B103 potentiometer for the time traveling tuner wheel.
  • A switch to turn it off and on, of course.
  • A radio housing. Byte-Rider used an old model NR-3013, but the Pi Zero’s small size and components can fit many other models that you find out there and like.

What’s more, you will have to use the software Tardis Radio (the reference to the Doctor who to name this time machine) that you can download for free from the creator’s repository on Github.

Of course, you also have to have skill, that you cannot buy.

Although the project is open source, so that anyone can reproduce it and use the software, the truth is that Byte-Rider has not yet uploaded the connection and solder diagrams to Github, nor the modifications that it made to the hardware.

However, if you are skilled enough, or are a maker professional, like many of those who read The OutputYou shouldn’t have much trouble building your own time machine and fleeing to a better time. At least musically.

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